Product Description

Reiner Knizia's Colossal Arena is a reprint of the classic Titan: The Arena, published by the Avalon Hill game company.

Colossal Arena features gorgeous new art and four brand-new creatures -- not included in the original version -- making Colossal Arena a new and unique game experience. In this game of gladiatorial mayhem, eight monsters battle in the arena for your amusement, while crazed spectators leap into the fray to help their favorites.

Players place bets on the fantasy creatures they think will triumph. But beware! -- each creature boasts individual skills and abilities, and players must manage the spectator cards while guiding their bets to maximum payoff. Tension is high as one creature is eliminated every round. Will your favorite prevail? Or will your champion be destroyed and your fortunes lost?

Product Reviews

This is an absolutely terrific game. I had it
recommended to me in its prior incarnation as
Titan: The Arena, and bid on a few eBay auctions
of the out-of-print version. I'm glad I didn't
win any of them, as this recent addition to my
collection was much lower in price and reportedly
has more to offer.

This is about the best of the new games this
season. It is easy to teach and to learn, and
has quite a bit of depth. Kids who like Magic the
Gathering will pick this up especially quickly.

I looked forward to this with much hope as Titan: The
Arena is an excellent game worthy of staying in print.
However, Fantasy Flight really dropped the ball on this with
respect to the poor quality of the components.

First, while the original game included one of the best
examples of how NOT to write intuitive rules, this version
doesn't do much better. They are better written but omit
several key things that would make this more difficult for
newer players to pick it up.

The rules also come on some of the thinnest paper
available. After only a single play, our copy was already
showing major wear.

The cards themselves are not coated, or very poorly so if
they are. They feel very fragile and clearly will not stand
up well over repeated playings.

However, much worse than the quality of the stock of the
cards is the absolute disaster regarding the new look of the
cards. Take a look at a screenshot of the original game.
While it may look dated, the cards all were clearly unique
and clearly stood apart so that one character and his card
were instantly discernable from any other character.

That is not the case here. The cards are extremely
similar in look and in average lighting tend to all blend
together. New players will be overwhelmed with confusion
trying to differentiate between the cards. This also
explains why, suddenly, players on other forums are asking
for input on what to do when creatures die. In the original,
it wasn't a big deal. Here it leads to players playing cards
to the wrong creatures necessitating removal of all cards of
the dead creature.

Even worse is the state of the Spectator cards. This is
probably the most confusing element for new players. In the
original version Spectator cards were also completely
different in appearance from the creature and combat cards.
Here the main difference is that instead of white trim
around the creature's name, it has yellow trim.

In our group several players (including one seasoned
player) kept discarding valid spectator cards believing they
were optional creature cards not represented in the current
game.

The only improvement I find is in the tokens which were
of the lowest possible level in the original and nearly
impossible not to improve upon here.

For seasoned players, this version adds some nice new
options and makes the game available at a reasonable price
again, but not at the level it deserves. For new players,
best of luck. Your climb to comfort with this game will be
much harder due to these poor choices than what it could
have and should have been.

I would give this an even lower rating but the game
itself is easily a 4 so that helps offset the poor quality
here.

Other Resources for Colossal Arena:

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